A New Toastmasters Year: A Message from the District Director
Dear fellow Toastmasters,
Welcome to a new Toastmasters year! I am honoured and humbled to serve as your District Director for 2024-2025. I am looking forward to working with you, learning from you, and growing with you in this amazing journey of personal and professional development.
As we start this new year, I would like to acknowledge and thank our outgoing District Director Ian Pickens, DTM for his outstanding leadership and dedication during a challenging year. He led our district with resilience, courage, and compassion, and achieved many remarkable results including leading the district to achieve distinguished status for our membership payments and distinguished clubs’ goals. These achievements put us in the 1st and 2nd quartile of the whole world. Ian also mentored and supported me in preparing for this role, and I am very grateful for his guidance and friendship.
I would also like to congratulate and welcome our new District Trio: Program Quality Director Tom Bielski and Club Growth Director Maree Pickens. They are very experienced and passionate Toastmasters who have a clear vision and a strong commitment to serve our district. I am excited to work with them as a team and support them in their respective portfolios.
But the most important people I want to acknowledge and appreciate are you, the club officers. You are the backbone of our district, the leaders who make a difference in your clubs and communities. You are the ones who create a positive and supportive environment for your members to learn and grow. You are the ones who inspire and motivate your members to achieve their goals and dreams. You are the ones who exemplify the Toastmasters values of integrity, respect, service, and excellence.
You are the reason why I love Toastmasters.
As your District Director, my primary goal is to serve you and support you in fulfilling your club mission and vision. I want to help you provide a quality club experience for your members, so that they can develop their communication and leadership skills, and become more confident and effective speakers and leaders.
I also want to help you grow your club membership, so that you can reach more people and share the benefits of Toastmasters with them. I believe that Toastmasters has the power to transform lives, and I want to spread this message to as many people as possible.
And I want to help you celebrate your club achievements, so that you can recognize and reward your members for their hard work and dedication. I want to see you shine and succeed, and I want to share your stories and best practices with the rest of the district.
To achieve these goals, I need your help and cooperation. I need you to attend the Club Officer Training (COT) sessions and learn the essential skills and knowledge to run your club effectively. I need you to implement the Distinguished Club Program (DCP) and track your club progress and performance throughout the year. I need you to communicate with your Area and Division Directors and share your challenges and successes with them. And I need you to embrace the Toastmasters spirit of continuous improvement and feedback, and always seek to learn and grow.
When we join forces with one shared purpose, we can meet our bold but realistic goals for 2024-2025 – to make District 17 a better, more resilient and inclusive community that values respect, integrity, service and excellence after the pandemic.
We can build on the strong foundation we established last year to expand our district for the first time since the pandemic. We have several distinct advantages we can use to build new clubs - the capacity to offer hybrid and online meeting options, the growing interest in support programs from specialty groups, especially multi-cultural groups, and the demand for organisations to access high quality and low-cost learning programs in challenging economic times.
In our district, we have a wonderful variety of clubs that reflect our diversity and vitality, with clubs from different cultures, backgrounds, and professions. In addition, we have a complete team of Division Directors, Area Directors and district executive leaders – experienced Toastmasters who have volunteered to help your clubs while enhancing their leadership skills. Find out who they are here and see which leaders are responsible for supporting your club in particular. You can also reach out to them directly from this page to introduce yourself and learn more about them and invite then to your club. With Quality Club Curriculum support from Toastmasters International and a refreshed District leadership team, we are dedicated to giving you the resources and support you need to recover, expand, and flourish.
We can learn so much from each other, and we have so much to share with the people of Western Australia and beyond who join us online. This is our chance to make this year unforgettable and rewarding, where we don't just reach our goals but go beyond them! Let's work as a team and support each other as a family. Let's have fun and enjoy the Toastmasters journey.
I am excited about the year ahead and I hope you are too. Together, we can make District 17 the best success story in Toastmasters!
Jeff Zhang - District 17 Director 2024-2025
